The Whole Food Market, Inc.

The Whole Food Market, Inc.

Introduction

Paper assesses the application of nine opportunity lenses on the Whole Food Market, Inc. The paper analyzes relative risk of each opportunity lens by drawing the comparison of potential business profit against resources expanded by the selected organization. Finally, paper creates an opportunity map to demonstrate opportunities available over time with their relative impact on the business performance.

Discussion

Whole Food Market, Inc. is a chain of organic and natural foods supermarkets, operating in the UK, Canada and the US. As per the reported financial performance of the company for the year 2008, it earned business revenue of $7,953.9 million, which was 20.7% higher than the previous year. However, there was a decline of 37.3% in the net business profit that closed business financial performance for the year by $114.5 million net earnings to the company (Datamonitor, 2009).



Application of Nine Lenses of Opportunity

Nine lenses of opportunity are designed to foster how effectively business leadership is engaged in mapping the business. It provides a platform to fundamentally change the way of looking at one's business (9lenses Framework, n.d.). It can help organizations and their leadership to recognize opportunities and gaps and allows the organization to focus on knowledge enhancement and design strategies that can be executed specifically to the need of the organization. These opportunity lenses enable an organization to align the business investment with the bottom line of the organization. An organization can continually assess and improve its business performance by utilizing the framework of nine lenses of opportunity, as illustrated by figure 1:

Figure 1: Continuous Business Assessment (9lenses Framework, n.d., p. 4)

Market

Theory behind this lens is to understand the market, size, characteristics, target, opportunity, customer behavior and preferences, investment, competition, timing, positioning, differentiation and size (9lenses Framework, n.d.). Assessment and understanding of the market can help provide an organization with the tools of leading its business processes in the right direction. It can assist the organization to align its business objectives and policies with the changing trends of the market to ensure its survival and sustainable flow of business accomplishments.

In the scenario of Whole Food Market, the company is targeting customers from multiple segments of the food industry. One of the key business strengths is the implementation of focused growth strategy that allowed the organization to effectively enhance its market share of the food industry. The company has well managed its expanding business size by understanding the changing customer preferences and offering the right product features that satisfy their vast customer database (Rouse & DeLaurell, 2008).

Company has always kept an eye on the initiative taken by the competitors. Its careful analysis of the external environment allowed the organization to timely avail the opportunity of merging its business operations with Wild Oats. M&A decision was a sharp evaluation of the market conditions, though the organization had to face court trial and accusation of engaging in a merger that could create monopoly in the relative market (Rouse & DeLaurell, ...